IT COULD have been a crime. Another embarrassingly bad British gangster movie of which this country and, some would say, this city has had more than its fair share.
But Layer Cake is something different. It may even be up there with the great BGMs such as Get Carter and The Long Good Friday.
Maybe that's got something to do with the pedigree.
It's not only directed by Matthew Vaughn, who produced Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch - two of the best recent BGMs - but the leading man just happens to be one of Liverpool's finest actors, Daniel Craig.
It is also the genuine article. Its screenplay, which was adapted by writer JJ Connolly from his book of the same name, has the tacit approval of the boys who matter, the real bad guys.
As Vaughn explains: "The people who really know their stuff think that this is as real as it gets."
The Cake is a metaphor for the different strata of British society whether it's the crime world or anywhere else he maintains.
The main man on cake walk is the British alternative to the man with no name played by Craig. Polite and meticulously well dressed he has made a fortune from selling cocaine and ecstasy while retaining his anonymity.
Now he's looking for the easy way out with a last deal - but it doesn't prove to be quite as easy as he thinks in a plot with as many twists and turns as a Mad Mouse ride in the amusement park.
It's authentic, intelligent, occasionally brutal but best of all it's a good yarn, which is the quintessential ingredient to a good gangster film say both Matthew and Daniel as we chinwagged on a whistlestop promo trip.
"We're really aware of differential between a good and a bad gangster movie," says Vaughn.. "We watched most of the bad ones and made mental notes of just not what to do. We made a pact that we were going to get as far away as possible from the cartoon capery of Lock Stock as possible and do a more realistic crime thriller.
"That's what all the good gangster films have got. The Godfather, Scarface, Heat, Get Carter, The Long Good Friday - they've all got great characters that you can believe in with a story that you want to hear. And not what all the others have got - which is basically the f--- you! f--- you! Bang! Bang! stuff from which you kind of switch off.
Or as Craig puts it: "I don't believe that you should go out and make a genre movie - you go out to tell a story."
The film also features an excellently convincing supporting cast including Colm Meaney, Kenneth Cranham plus a host of excellent Liverpool character actors including Louis Emerick, Stephen Walters (Brookside's Mick Johnson and Geoff "Growler" Rogers respectively) and Paul Orchard who play a trio of street-suss scally drug dealers.
